Белый Клык / White Fang

To run down[25 - to run down – загнать, настигнуть] meat was to experience happiness. His battles were pleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living.

And there were satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to lay lazily in the sunshine—such things were remuneration. They were expressions of life, and life is always happy when it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostile environment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud of himself.

Part III

Chapter I. THE MAKERS OF FIRE

The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his own fault. He had been careless. He had woken up, left the cave and run down to the stream to drink.

Before him, sitting silently on their haunches, were five live things. He had never seen such before. It was his first look at mankind. But at the sight of him the five men did not spring to their feet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl. They did not move.

Nor did the cub move.

Every instinct of his nature told him to run away, but there was another instinct. He felt his own weakness. Here was mastery and power, something far and away beyond him.

The cub had never seen man, but he recognized in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over the other animals of the Wild. With the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now looking upon man. He felt the fear and the respect and the experience of the generations. Had he been full-grown, he would have run away.

But now he lied down in a paralysis of fear.

One of the Indians walked over to him. The cub cowered closer to the ground. It was the unknown, in concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down to seize him. His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips wrinkled and his little fangs were bared. The man’s hand hesitated and he spoke laughing, “Wabam wabisca ip pit tah.” (“Look! The white fangs!”)

The other Indians laughed loudly, and asked the man on to pick up the cub.

As the hand descended closer and closer, there was within the cub a battle of the instincts. He wanted to surrender and to fight. He did both. He surrendered till the hand almost touched him. Then he fought, and his teeth sank into the hand. The next moment he received a hit on the head. Then his puppyhood and the instinct of obedience mastered him. He sat up and cried. But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry.